DoJ on breaking up Google

[moonbat]

Sounds a lot like the Microsoft case from a quarter century ago, but remains to be seen whether it pans out. I'll settle for just separating Chrome and breaking their stranglehold on web standards.

The DoJ says that the starting point for addressing Google’s unlawful conduct is undoing its effects on search distribution. For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving rivals with little to no incentive to compete for users. Similarly, rivals cannot compete for these distribution channels because Google’s monopoly-funded revenue share payments disincentivize its partners from diverting queries to Google’s rivals. This is likely in reference to the billions of dollars that Google pays to Apple to be the default search option on the iPhone.

For this, the DoJ is considering several remedies. One is evaluating remedies that would limit or prohibit default agreements, preinstallation agreements, and other revenue-sharing arrangements related to Search.

The second set of remedies includes “behavioral and structural remedies” that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google Search and Google Search-related products and features over rivals or new entrants.

[Basilisk-Dev]

Google responded to this by asserting that “DOJ’s radical and sweeping proposals risk hurting consumers, businesses, and developers.” While the company intends to respond in detail to DoJ’s final proposals, it says that the DoJ is “already signaling requests that go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.”

Google says that it has invested billions of dollars in Chrome and Android. Since these two products help people access the web and use Google’s products, it offers them and their underlying code for free, and few companies would have the ability or incentive to keep them open source or keep investing. Google warns that breaking off Chrome and Android would change their business models, raise the cost of devices, and undermine Android and Google Play as competitors to Apple’s iPhone and App Store.

I find it ironic that Google is attempting to defend themselves and their position, but instead of achieving that goal they are providing more and more reasons for us to support the DoJ in their efforts to break up the monopoly.

[frostknight]

I would love big tech to get its hands off the web design in general so that the web can be like it was with html4 only better and with less privacy issues, etc...

Its a pipe dream for a while though this thought.

Maybe someday? Not for a long time though.

[Tharthan]

Google responded to this by asserting that “DOJ’s radical and sweeping proposals risk hurting consumers, businesses, [...]”

I can picture very few actions that would rein Google in that would "hurt consumers" or other businesses.

The only one who would really be hurt is Google itself, in the same way that monopolistic organisations of the past in the United States were "hurt" by antitrust remedies.

In the past, consumers were greatly helped by those antitrust remedies.